Mark Twain: A Biography, by Albert Bigelow Paine

Chapter XCVII

The Walk to Boston

The new home became more beautiful to them as things found their places, as the year deepened; and the wonder of
autumn foliage lit up their landscape. Sitting on one of the little upper balconies Mrs. Clemens wrote:

The atmosphere is very hazy, and it makes the autumn tints even more soft and beautiful than usual. Mr. Twichell
came for Mr. Clemens to go walking with him; they returned at dinner-time, heavily laden with autumn leaves.

And as usual Clemens, finding the letter unfinished, took up the story.

Twichell came up here with me to luncheon after services, and I went back home with him and took Susy along in her
little carriage. We have just got home again, middle of afternoon, and Livy has gone to rest and left the west balcony
to me. There is a shining and most marvelous miracle of cloud-effects mirrored in the brook; a picture which began with
perfection, and has momently surpassed it ever since, until at last it is almost unendurably beautiful.
. . .

There is a cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as manifold as those in an opal and as delicate as the
tintings of a sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming through it and obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he
casts abroad from his shoulders.

The customary Sunday assemblage of strangers is gathered together in the grounds discussing the house.

Twichell and Clemens took a good many walks these days; long walks, for Twichell was an athlete and Clemens had not
then outgrown the Nevada habit of pedestrian wandering. Talcott’s Tower, a wooden structure about five miles from
Hartford, was one of their favorite objective points; and often they walked out and back, talking so continuously, and
so absorbed in the themes of their discussions, that time and distance slipped away almost unnoticed. How many things
they talked of in those long walks! They discussed philosophies and religions and creeds, and all the range of human
possibility and shortcoming, and all the phases of literature and history and politics. Unorthodox discussions they
were, illuminating, marvelously enchanting, and vanished now forever. Sometimes they took the train as far as
Bloomfield, a little station on the way, and walked the rest of the distance, or they took the train from Bloomfield
home. It seems a strange association, perhaps, the fellowship of that violent dissenter with that fervent soul
dedicated to church and creed, but the root of their friendship lay in the frankness with which each man delivered his
dogmas and respected those of his companion.

It was during one of their walks to the tower that they planned a far more extraordinary undertaking — nothing less,
in fact, than a walk from Hartford to Boston. This was early in November. They did not delay the matter, for the
weather was getting too uncertain.

Clemens wrote Redpath:

DEAR REDPATH — Rev. J. H. Twichell and I expect to start at 8 o’clock Thursday morning to walk to Boston in twenty
four hours — or more. We shall telegraph Young’s Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow for a low average of
pedestrianism.

It was half past eight on Thursday morning, November 12, 1874, that they left Twichell’s house in a carriage, drove
to the East Hartford bridge, and there took to the road, Twichell carrying a little bag and Clemens a basket of
lunch.

The papers had got hold of it by this time, and were watching the result. They did well enough that first day,
following the old Boston stage road, arriving at Westford about seven o’clock in the evening, twenty-eight miles from
the starting-point. There was no real hotel at Westford, only a sort of tavern, but it afforded the luxury of rest.
“Also,” says Twichell, in a memoranda of the trip, “a sublimely profane hostler whom you couldn’t jostle with any sort
of mild remark without bringing down upon yourself a perfect avalanche of oaths.”

This was a joy to Clemens, who sat behind the stove, rubbing his lame knees and fairly reveling in Twichell’s
discomfiture in his efforts to divert the hostler’s blasphemy. There was also a mellow inebriate there who recommended
kerosene for Clemens’s lameness, and offered as testimony the fact that he himself had frequently used it for stiffness
in his joints after lying out all night in cold weather, drunk: altogether it was a notable evening.

Westford was about as far as they continued the journey afoot. Clemens was exceedingly lame next morning, and had
had a rather bad night; but he swore and limped along six miles farther, to North Ashford, then gave it up. They drove
from North Ashford to the railway, where Clemens telegraphed Redpath and Howells of their approach. To Redpath:

We have made thirty-five miles in less than five days. This demonstrates that the thing can be done. Shall now
finish by rail. Did you have any bets on us?

To Howells:

Arrive by rail at seven o’clock, the first of a series of grand annual pedestrian tours from Hartford to Boston to
be performed by us. The next will take place next year.

Redpath read his despatch to a lecture audience, with effect. Howells made immediate preparation for receiving two
way-worn, hungry men. He telegraphed to Young’s Hotel: “You and Twichell come right up to 37 Concord Avenue, Cambridge,
near observatory. Party waiting for you.”

They got to Howells’s about nine o’clock, and the refreshments were waiting. Miss Longfellow was there, Rose
Hawthorne, John Fiske, Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor, and others of their kind. Howells tells in his book how Clemens,
with Twichell, “suddenly stormed in,” and immediately began to eat and drink:

I can see him now as he stood up in the midst of our friends, with his head thrown back, and in his hand a dish of
those escalloped oysters without which no party in Cambridge was really a party, exulting in the tale of his adventure,
which had abounded in the most original characters and amusing incidents at every mile of their progress.

Clemens gave a dinner, next night, to Howells, Aldrich, Osgood, and the rest. The papers were full of jokes
concerning the Boston expedition; some even had illustrations, and it was all amusing enough at the time.

Next morning, sitting in the writing-room of Young’s Hotel, he wrote a curious letter to Mrs. Clemens, though
intended as much for Howells and Aldrich as for her. It was dated sixty-one years ahead, and was a sort of Looking
Backwards, though that notable book had not yet been written. It presupposed a monarchy in which the name of Boston has
been changed to “Limerick,” and Hartford to “Dublin.” In it, Twichell has become the “Archbishop of Dublin,” Howells
“Duke of Cambridge,” Aldrich “Marquis of Ponkapog,” Clemens the “Earl of Hartford.” It was too whimsical and delightful
a fancy to be forgotten.85

85 [This remarkable and amusing document will be found under
Appendix M.]

A long time afterward, thirty-four year, he came across this letter. He said:

“It seems curious now that I should have been dreaming dreams of a future monarchy and never suspect that the
monarchy was already present and the Republic a thing of the past.”

What he meant, was the political succession that had fostered those commercial trusts which, in turn, had
established party dominion.

To Howells, on his return, Clemens wrote his acknowledgments, and added:

Mrs. Clemens gets upon the verge of swearing, and goes tearing around in an unseemly fury when I enlarge upon the
delightful time we had in Boston, and she not there to have her share. I have tried hard to reproduce Mrs. Howells to
her, and have probably not made a shining success of it.